I’ve bitten off more than I can chew – I’ve committed to cook lunch for 300 rough sleepers on Christmas Day, on top of cooking my family meal. so I need to be super organised and prep most of my food in advance.

I was thinking of what awesome things freeze well, and I remembered cheesecakes. There’s nothing that says “cool and cheffy” like messing with traditional recipes and making them somewhat unexpected. SO, instead of making sweet cheesecake, I thought that Savoury Cheesecakes would be even more awesome. And, on top of that, if we make a basic flavour, you can top it with just about anything!

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Let’s get started. It takes all of about 30 minutes from start to finish.

Ingredients

1 Tub Creamed Cottage Cheese (or cream cheese)

2 eggs

1/2 tsp Salt (you could use something like powdered vegetable stock if you like)

5-10 Wheatsworth crackers (crushed)

1tsp butter (soft)

Optional (but delicious!)

1Tbsp chives (chopped finely)

1Tbsp spring onions (chopped finely)

1tsp finely chopped lemon zest

Method

Preheat your oven to 180°C

Mix the crushed crackers with the butter, and spoon into the base of about 8 muffin tins (silicone is awesome for this). Press down with the back of the spoon, so it squashed into the bottom.

In a clean bowl, mix the cream cheese, egg and chives/onions and lemon zest, then season with salt &/or pepper

when it’s properly mixed and all the cream cheese lumps are gone, spoon the mixture into the muffin cases.

Bake for 12 minutes, or until the middle of the cheesecakes look like they’ve just set.

Cool down, then either refrigerate or freeze.

It’s helpful to freeze the cheesecakes in the silicon muffin cases, and then remove, separate layers with grease-proof paper, and protect in a freezer-proof container).

To defrost, just take the cheesecakes from the freezer and leave them out about an hour before you serve them. You can also defrost them overnight in the freezer.

Variations:

You can change up the flavour of the cheesecake by adding the following to the mix before cooking

Fresh herbs, such as Chopped Basil, or Lemon Thyme, or even a little bit of lavender or rosemary (save the flowers to decorate)